The new prices have been significantly reduced, for instance a SQL Azure database
of 25GB used to cost $299.97 per month, and with the new price schema it will cost $75.99.

You can see all the details here: Announcing Reduced Pricing on SQL Azure and New 100MB Database Option

Windows Azure by default uses integrated mode, but for the sake of simplicity, in some migration scenarios, you could also use Classic mode, that will give you the chance to keep your components as they are.

In order to do that, follow the next steps:

• You need to add a reference to the library Microsoft.Web.Administration.dll
• You need to override the OnStart event and add the following code:

   

  Imports System

  Imports System.Collections.Generic

  Imports System.Linq

  Imports Microsoft.WindowsAzure

  Imports Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics

  Imports Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime

  Imports Microsoft.Web.Administration

   

  Public Class WebRole

  Inherits RoleEntryPoint

   

  Public Overrides Function OnStart() As Boolean

   

  'Configure Azure Tracing

  ConfigureTracing()

   

  'Configure Azure Pipeline

  SetClassicIISPipelineMode()

   

  Return MyBase.OnStart()

   

  End Function

  ''' <summary>

  ''' Set IIS Pipeline mode to Classic

  ''' Only use that method when the app needs backward compatibility

  ''' </summary>

  ''' <remarks></remarks>

  Private Sub SetClassicIISPipelineMode()

   

  Dim srvManager As New ServerManager()

   

  Try

  Trace.WriteLine("SetClassicIISPipelineMode starting...")

   

  Dim appSite = (From site In srvManager.Sites

  Where site.Name.Contains(RoleEnvironment.CurrentRoleInstance.Role.Name)).FirstOrDefault()

  If Not appSite Is Nothing Then

  Trace.WriteLine("AppSite reference retreived")

  Dim appPool = (From pool In srvManager.ApplicationPools

  Where pool.Name = appSite.Applications(0).ApplicationPoolName).FirstOrDefault()

  If (Not appPool Is Nothing) Then

  Trace.WriteLine("AppPool reference retreived. Changing mode...")

  appPool.ManagedPipelineMode = ManagedPipelineMode.Classic

  srvManager.CommitChanges()

  Trace.WriteLine("Changes Commited")

  End If

  Else

  Trace.WriteLine("Unable to get AppSite reference")

  End If

   

  Catch ex As Exception

  Trace.WriteLine("SetClassicIISPipelineMode Exception: " + ex.ToString())

  Finally

  srvManager.Dispose()

  End Try

  End Sub

   

   

  Private Sub ConfigureTracing()

  System.Diagnostics.Trace.Listeners.Add(New Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Diagnostics.DiagnosticMonitorTraceListener())

  'The Config is Done using the diagnostics.wadcfg file

  End Sub

   

  End Class

And that's it, after these changes, your application will run under IIS classic pipeline mode and you won't have to modify any of your components based on classic pipeline mode.

I really look forward to working with all of you; one of my objectives for this year is to help the community as much as possible, so stay tuned!!

For more details, have a look to the SQL Azure Team Blog :SQL Azure at TechEd 2010

I would really recommend to spent some time to read it :

Security Best Practices for Developing Windows Azure Applications

This case is a great example of how Windows Azure can help to redefine IT services as Business services.The agility provided by Windows Azure allows Tribune to dynamically  grow their IT capabilities without any limit :

In Steve’s own words :

 Adopting Windows Azure helps us heighten our relevance … in a scalable, cost-effective way. The pay-as-you-go model is a lot less expensive than the $1.5 million annually that we would have spent.

Steve Gable
Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Tribune Company

Microsoft passes the 10,000 customer milestone with Azure

Scott Densmore has published a useful post about how automatic deployments  can be done in Windows Azure and integrate that deployments in your ALM tasks: Azure Deployment for your Build Server.

AzureScope : This is a great resource about Windows Azure,I really recommend you to  invest some time and read the content it contains.You will find really valuable information about:

• Benchmark test cases and throughput reports
• Best practices on developing on Windows Azure.
• Code Samples.

Hope that you find it useful.

Additionally I would also recommend to have a look to Azure Research Engagement, it contains interesting information about how Azure is being applied in research projects.

Additionally it also helps to understand the value of Cloud computing and being more precisely Azure.

Linked with my previous post Auto-scaling in Azure, I wanted to talk about the most common workload patterns.

On and Off pattern

Growing fast

Unpredictable bursting

Predictable bursting

Identifying your service workload pattern helps you to maximize the compute capacity utilization and reducing TCO.

As I described in the post Auto-scaling in Azure you can dynamically grow or decrease your service compute capacity.So you could schedule the computing capacity of your service according to the workload pattern.